elephantpublicity-blog

[elephantpublicity-blog]

eleRANT: Marketing Manager of the NZ International Comedy Festival, Poet, Writer, Woman, Annabel Hawkins Everyone loves a good rant. eleRANT is a series with some of our favourite artists, creators and hard workers, ranting on something they’re passionate about.

Annabel Hawkins: Art keeps us feeling things, and feeling things is good.

Coming back to NZ to work for an arts festival after working in advertising in Melbourne has been a confrontation of arts versus commerce, where they intersect and just how god damn exhausting it is trying to promote something you genuinely care about.

Art Festival promotion often feels like you are trying to coerce everyone who is comfortably far away from the cliff face further to the edge. You are asking them to jump off with you. Some people like the unknown and for others, it’s a little uncomfortable.

And I get it, it’s so easy not to. Jump, I mean.

To go out after work or on the weekends because you are tired. To spend money on a show you don’t know for sure will be good when you have rent to pay and things you need to buy to live and every time you spend money on something other than utilities and a bottle of Fat Bird chardonnay you think of your student loan and the house you don’t own.

There is also this overwhelming ability to stay home and be content with watching things online and feeling like this is enough of a cultural experience. The internet has kind of messed with our concept of art like this.

We are also so god damn absorbed by our phones and our other, online life, that it’s easy to forget about stimulating our physical one.

I helped make a documentary last year based on the premise that I had used my phone for 42 different things over the course of a day. Let alone a week. And this made me a very distracted human being. Plus, I’m not even cool on the Internet. I can’t imagine how consuming it is for people who are.

It’s like we have so many options we are afraid of making a decision and being disappointed by it. An analogy of decision paralysis standing in front of a smorgasbord at Valentine’s would not be out of place here.

But each time I go and see something live (art, comedy, a gig, a play, whatever), something shifts in me. Whether that is a good or a bad shift is beside the point.

Maybe it is ‘I wish I was in bed the whole time I was out’ or ‘I wish I was making more art’ or simply, ‘that was fucking weird/amazing/confronting/incomprehensible/alternative/ conservative’.

Art is a visceral experience and I think its value to us has become confused over time because we can just get that kind of stimulation from watching a YouTube video on the way to work and feel like we’ve had some sort of entertainment.

And we have. But it’s not live. It lacks that ‘anything could happen’ possibility. It lacks that proverbial jump.

Why is an emotional shift good? Because it moves us from one place to another. And if we stay too long in our comfortable five-day work commute, one day bender, one day recovery weekly routine, we get too complacent about our world around us.

And what happens then? Fashions like Crocs and carrying pink Supre bags take off and no one stops in time to question them. Amongst other things.

And what is the worst thing that happens when we go to something we don’t like? We make opinions and have real life experience to back them up.

Basically, what I’m trying to say is that art can reframe the context of your life in one quick, hot minute. Or, at the very least, it can distract you from your work emails and life admin for long enough to let you dream a bit. And that can never not be a good thing.

Thanks for listening. Rant over.

Photo credit: Anna Williams

Website: annabelhawkins.com Insta: @_annabel_hawkins Twitter: @belhawkins

[elephantpublicity-blog]

eleRANT: Co-founder of ART IN MOTION Jayden Rudolph Everyone loves a good rant. eleRANT is a series with some of our favourite artists, creators and hard workers, ranting on something they’re passionate about. 

Jayden Rudolph on the loss of Stage Challenge and the new competition format they have created for young performers.

When my high school dance teacher alerted me that Stage Challenge was over, at first I was in a state of shock and completely baffled, but then immediately after I knew that I would have to do something for my own local community. It wasn’t until I saw Teale [Vint, co-founder] that the seed was planted and the idea of ART IN MOTION was born.

It was truly important for me to be able to facilitate an event like this because I know for sure that if I did not receive an experience like Stage Challenge, I would not have become head boy, I would have not been this confident flamboyant man that I am today, and I certainly would not have found my way into this industry. This event will build people and allow people to know that performing arts is not just a hobby but an actual career. If we can cement that idea in people’s heads through this event, then we are helping all these future students understand that what they want to do can be done.

Performing arts events like A.I.M can allow students to understand that their creative work matters and it is valued. We must not allow performing arts to be a boutique subject or a passionate hobby any longer. Why can we not allow students to follow their passion and be successful in it? I want to provide those opportunities for senior students that they may never had before or would never get otherwise. I think it’s also important for students who do not wish to continue through this industry to know that performing arts nurture skills such as teamwork, problem solving, and leadership that are so valued in today's employment environment.

I also hope that this event can provide jobs for people around New Zealand, allowing younger people in this industry who are struggling to work alongside industry professionals to run A.I.M in many more parts of the country.  It is time that New Zealand students had something new and creatively challenging to work towards and we want to share that with the whole country. I see it involving into a game changing event, a monumental exhibition for young performance art. A.I.M will not be just a competition or event, it will be a platform to highlight those who want to succeed. A chance for students from all schools to have the chance to be taught and tutored by industry professionals and use their skills as directors, choreographers, and leaders to receive scholarships and opportunities in New Zealand and overseas for their contribution to their performances. I want there to be a change in the performing arts world in New Zealand and this is how we can shift that perspective, away from the negative connotations towards the arts to more positive, reassuring ones.

[elephantpublicity-blog]

eleRANT: Director of the Auckland Fringe Festival Lydia Zanetti 

Everyone loves a good rant. eleRANT is a series with some of our favourite artists, creators and hard workers, ranting about something they’re passionate about.

For the first installment, read Lydia Zanetti’s speech from the launch party of Auckland Fringe Festival 2018.

Kia ora and welcome to the Auckland Fringe Opening Party in cahoots with the fabulous VICE!

My name is Lydia Zanetti and what an absolute honour it is to stand before you for the second time as Director of this feisty wee fest. 2018 marks the sixth Auckland Fringe festival, and we are proud to say - the first year it has gone annual!

Fringe isn’t something we made up. Each year 250 Fringe festivals happen across the globe, including in our very own Wellington and Dunedin. Built by a group of 8 artists who in the face of not being programmed in the first Edinburgh International Festival in 1947 decided to just turn up and put on their dang shows anyway, Edinburgh Festival Fringe celebrated its 70th birthday in 2017 - cementing its place as the largest arts festival in the world. In Australia, the 2nd and 3rd biggest Fringe festivals in the world are happening as we speak in Perth and Adelaide. Comedy, circus, cabaret, music, theatre, dance, visual arts, spoken word and more are all represented in these festivals.

We are not alone. By being involved with Auckland Fringe we are all part of a worldwide Fringe community fighting for accessibility, celebrating otherness and exploring where art can go next.

We are young and ready to fight. 2017 was the year the festival left it’s mum’s house and moved into it’s first flat. In the face of much less financial support then we hoped for, we went out to the artists of Auckland asking - is this festival important? And they came back with a resounding YES. So we buckled down and got on with what artists are by necessity very good at - just making it work. On $7,500 worth of funding we put on a stellar festival across 3 weeks featuring 536 artists in 39 venues. And in 2018 we’ve made it a shorter, punchier hit of two weeks - but we’ve still drawn the same engagement. This festival is on the move.

The 2017 festival was one of the hardest and most rewarding things I have ever done. And I am eternally grateful I did it. But every day, artists are doing things that are incredibly hard. Every day, artists are putting their personal lives and their livelihoods on the line. Every day, venue staff are working their butts off to make space for artists and audiences to meet, to have conversations. Every day, technicians are working late into the night, producers are fighting to get support for and audiences to shows, funders are advocating for more money for the arts. Why? Because we care. We care with all our hearts. We care about making space for people to meet, to be challenged, to be understood, to be changed.

Auckland Fringe is committed to never forgetting this. Committed to this festival being accessible, inclusive and sustainable for every single person involved. We’re young, we’re still figuring out how to get to the point where we can shout dinner. But we’re going to get there.

In 2017 the greater Auckland community came together to make Auckland Fringe happen on a shoestring. In 2018, we have more support. What are we doing with this? We are consolidating our learnings, reaching out into new areas of Auckland, building new support networks & development initiatives, helping connect artists with future touring opportunities - essentially opening our arms a little wider. Because we can’t rely on a community to carry everything. Because the artists need the space to make the art. Because sustainability isn’t relying on the same people again and again.

So here is my challenge, get out and support the Auckland Fringe artists who are taking huge risks to put on their events. Take a risk yourself - try going to an event you wouldn’t usually go to.

Visit Caesar’s Rome, for example. Go on a boat trip. Support an international artist so it is more viable for them to keep taking their work to the world. See cats dancing. Drink a cocktail. Be part of a trial. Watch paint dry. Compete in a cooking show. See kapa haka meet Maori contemporary dance. Listen to some of our best musicians. Laugh with our incredible comedians. Engage in an exhibition. Sit quietly at the back of a theatre and marvel at our Auckland and Aotearoa New Zealand stories. See something you may not understand which may move you in a way you won’t see coming - and will stay with you for years.

And then, after these two jam-packed weeks of joy are over, keep doing it. All year. And the next. And the next. Because a Fringe festival may be the hotbed but it’s also a springboard - and we don’t stop once it’s over. Artists, producers, technicians & more keep making, and making, and making. Because this complex, icky world needs us to. Please take this moment, artistic community, to acknowledge - what you do is important.

Here’s the thing: these festivals, these artworks, these spaces - they are only possible because of the people. He tangata, he tangata, he tangata. It is the people, it is the people, it is the people.

I would like to take this opportunity to personally thank all the people who have helped make Auckland Fringe 2018 happen.

To the Auckland Fringe Trust past & present, in particular: Helaina Keeley, Richard Olney, Raewyn Baker & Amy Saunders

To our funders & especially their tirelessly working staff: Foundation North, Creative New Zealand, Auckland Council and Waitemata Local Board

To our key support organisations & all their beautiful people: alt group, Elephant Publicity, iTICKET, Auckland Live, Q Theatre, Basement Theatre, MonsterValley, Phantom Billstickers, Andi Crown Photography, and Nicholson Print Solutions.

To our sponsors for this opening event: VICE, Sals Pizza, Auckland Live & Absolut Vodka

To the tireless hours worth of work from our staff & volunteers over the past year: THANK YOU Nisha Madhan, Ruby Reihana-Wilson, Chloe Baynes, Hayley Sproull, Katie Burson, Sam Snedden, Johanna Cosgrove, the esteemed industry judges for the awards ceremony and most of all the endless force of joy that is the festival producer extraordinaire Helen Sheehan.

Our final and hugest thank you goes to the folk that nothing is possible without - the artists, the venues and the audiences. Because without any of you, it’d be a rather dull old time.

So I hope your glasses are charged enough to join me in saying cheers to our two week art party bonanza, to Auckland Fringe. Cheers!

https://www.aucklandfringe.co.nz/

Photo credit: Andi Crown